Officer without his badge for first time in 36 years

Saturday

?ELLWOOD CITY — On Thursday afternoon, just after his shift ended, Chris Hardie tried to open the door of an Ellwood City police cruiser so someone could take a picture of him behind the wheel.

There was only one problem. The cruiser’s doors were locked and Hardie — for the first time in 36 years — didn’t have a key. After more than three and a half decades as a patrolman in Ellwood City, Hardie’s tour of duty ended Thursday with his retirement from the department.

Hardie has been a police officer since Sept. 7, 1975, and his involvement with the department goes back even further than that. While he was still in Community College of Beaver County’s police program, Hardie was one of Ellwood City’s first group of civilian dispatchers.

The dispatchers, hired by council to ease the uniformed officers’ duty burden, weren’t appreciated by then-Mayor Jack Snare, who preferred to have the department’s desk sergeants performing dispatching duties. For the entire time the dispatchers were on the payroll, which amounted to a few weeks, Hardie said, they had little to do aside from watch the police officers work.

“He said, ‘I don’t have anything against you, but I’m going to run this department,’” Hardie said, remembering Snare’s words. “’You can sit here and do your homework, but I’m not going to use you.’”

A few years later, after Hardie got his own badge, council prevailed in the dispatchers’ debate. The result — a 24-hour-a-day staffed dispatcher desk — worked well for police, he said.

When the Lawrence County dispatching center opened more than a decade ago, the borough eliminated all but one of its full-time secretary-

dispatchers. Even though computerized reports saves some time, as opposed to having officers type their own reports on typewriters, Hardie said it doesn’t make up for being able to have the dispatchers do that work.

“It was nice,” Hardie said. “We could write an incident up on a piece of paper and hand it to them and get back on the street.”

Looking back, Hardie remembers the major cases — not surprisingly, considering that there are few of them in a small town like Ellwood City. The first of those he listed was the arrest of Michael Atkinson in the 1980 murder of his landlady, Rosemary Puz. Jack Maine, who was Hardie’s training officer, made the arrest in that case.

At that time, Hardie was still in the early part of his career. And the next time Ellwood City police had to transport a murder suspect, Hardie was driving the cruiser. He and Officer Michael McBride were the responding officers last May 22 in the arrest of Keith Wolfrey, who is accused in the death of 20-year-old Joie Lordi.

But when pressed, Hardie remembers the odd moments that make up a big part of police work, like the woman who was sitting, clad in pajamas and a nightcap, on the porch of a house miles from her senior citizens’ home.

“She said, ‘I made my escape,’” Hardie said.

The woman, apparently afflicted with dementia, claimed she had tied together bed sheets to make her getaway from a senior high-rise. Even though no one ever found the bed-sheet rope, the means of her escape remains a mystery.

Hardie began his time working as a patrolman at the tail end of Ellwood City’s steel-fueled boom times, when the borough had a well-stocked business district.

“During the Christmas season, you could get your paycheck and go out of the municipal building and do all of your Christmas presents without leaving town,” he said.

No police career is complete without a classic dumb criminal story, and Hardie has one of those as well. Early in his time with Ellwood City’s police department, a masked man robbed Lawson’s Dairy Store, located on Line Avenue where The Store is today.

The man went in to Lawsons, threw a bag on the counter and demanded cash.

“But when he threw it down, his welfare card fell out,” Hardie said.

Even with his retirement, Hardie isn’t getting completely out of police work. He will likely have to testify in some still open cases, including the Wolfrey prosecution, and he plans to continue working as a part-time patrolman in Wayne Township.

But Hardie expects to have a lot more time to spend with his wife, Catherine, and children Jason, a recent college graduate, and Jessica, who is almost finished with a Ph.D. in physical therapy.

“And do a little work on my house that I’ve been neglecting,” Hardie said.

But he has fond memories of a police career well spent.

“You really do have a good group of officers and secretaries,” Hardie said. “And it’s amazing to see how nice people are in this town.”

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